Eight human rights organizations appealed to Israeli Attorney General Menachem Mazuz this week to establish an independent committee that would investigate attacks on Gaza civilians during the Israel Defense Forces operation in Gaza.
The organizations that launched the appeal on Jan. 20 — including B’Tselem, Gisha, Yesh Din and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel — say that an investigation independent of the government is necessary in order to establish whether international laws were broken by Israel.
ACRI attorney Limor Yehuda wrote that the organizations’ claims were based on various incidents reported by the media as well as reports emerging daily from Gaza.
According to Yehuda, the “appalling” number of women and children killed during the operation as well as suspicions of violated combat regulations require an efficient and extensive investigation by an independent organization. She said Palestinian medical sources had reported at least 1,300 casualties in Gaza, 410 of which were children.
The organizations further claim that attacks on civilian buildings should not be carried out on general suspicions, but rather, only based on well-founded information. They also condemned the rocket fire on Israel as aimed at harming civilians and a violation of international law. The use of civilians as human shields was also slammed by the groups.
However, the appeal said, these actions do not justify Israel’s violations of international law in Gaza.
Sari Bashi, a prominent Israeli human rights lawyer who runs Gisha, said, “Our credo is that there is the same international law that Israel and any other nation in world is bound to respect. We hold our own government accountable.”
Gisha, which works to protect the freedom of movement of Gaza’s Palestinians, has been careful to avoid taking political positions on the Israeli military operation itself. But Gisha and the other civil rights groups felt a special duty to point out the Jewish state’s moral and legal obligations during the conflict — even if those observations would not be well received by the Israeli public.
During the 22-day war, the organizations brought two cases to the Israeli Supreme Court dealing with issues of suspected violations of international humanitarian law. One demanded that the Israeli army stop attacking medical teams in Gaza and permit the wounded to be evacuated to hospitals. The second demanded that Israel’s Defense Ministry supply fuel and electricity to run Gaza’s hospitals, and sewage and water systems, all of which were on the verge of collapse during the fighting. Both cases were rejected.
Earlier, the groups filed another petition, this time calling on Israel to immediately and fully open the crossings of the Gaza Strip to the passage of goods and people. Specifically the groups are demanding what they term the unimpeded passage of medical equipment, medical personnel and wounded people, as well as fuel and spare parts for the humanitarian infrastructure.
Citing what they said were more than 300,000 people still without access to running water, sewage running in the streets and 200,000 people still without electricity for the 25th day, the groups said in a statement, “Israel itself brought the humanitarian systems in Gaza to the brink of collapse — and then gave them the final push. The tremendous number of injured — over 5,000 — requires substantial investment in rehabilitation. It is incumbent upon Israel to allow the movement of people and goods into and out of the Gaza Strip.”
During the war, Israelis largely dismissed protests of the country’s actions by international human rights organizations, the United Nations, the Red Cross and masses of demonstrators around the globe. In Israel, the protests were seen as evidence that the world does not understand Israel’s security needs or the caution the Israel Defense Forces says it practices to limit civilian casualties.
Responding to charges of callousness by the IDF, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said Jan. 19, “The Israeli Defense Forces, according to its principles, and justifiably so, tries to prevent harm to civilians.”
She told Israel Radio, “Just as in all countries in the world there is a difference between murder and negligent death or an accident, this is the difference between the IDF and terrorism. The terrorists look for children in kindergartens and schools, and for civilians. The IDF looks for terrorists, and it could be that sometimes in the war against terror civilians are harmed.”
Israeli human rights groups have challenged Israel’s official justification for the fighting as a purely defensive measure against Hamas for its rocket fire on southern Israel, accusing Israel of imposing a form of collective punishment on Gaza’s population by imposing an embargo on Gaza for the last year and a half, since Hamas wrested control of the strip from the more moderate Palestinian Fatah faction in June 2007.
While human rights groups were active on the legal and media front, peace groups staged candlelight vigils for civilians killed in Gaza and launched drives to collect emergency supplies for them, ranging from powdered milk to baby clothes and dry foods.
With Israel enforcing a ban on Israeli and foreign journalists from entering Gaza, the Israeli media offered relatively little coverage of Palestinian civilian casualties for most of the war.
Dina Kraft is a reporter for JTA. Aviad Glickman is a reporter for the Jerusalem Post.